EMC and SAP plan a romp in the clouds

EMC may partner with German software giant SAP to develop a suite of web hosted storage and application services.

In an interview with Reuters, SAP executive Doug Merritt said the two companies are in early-stage talks to add SAP's business applications to EMC's burgeoning software-as-a-service (SaaS) storage platform.

Both companies are mum on any technical or financial details of the proposed collaboration. But let's look at how things lay.

In January, EMC unveiled MozyEnterprise, the first offering in its new hosted software line dubbed "Fortress." The online backup and recovery suite is based on technology acquired from Berkeley Data Systems last October. EMC made sure to point out Mozy is only the first step in expanding the SaaS operation.

SAP has also been noisy about launching its own flavor of on-demand service called BusinessByDesign to combat Salesforce.com. At an announcement in September, SAP said it will look to partner with companies to provide applications and hosting.

The two puzzle pieces could logically fit together. As could be expected for an "early-stage" corporate affair, both companies declined to comment. But EMC veep Chuck Hollis helps push speculation. In his company blog, we see Hollis resist offering details, but perfectly happy to paint a picture of how such a collaboration would be, oh, such a grand idea.